Happy #bookreview day, everyone!
Some nonfiction for today's review, and one of those books that topped all the recommended lists I saw last Christmas. I figure, with the holiday season upon us, it was appropriate to address one of the books I asked for last Christmas.
Okay, so... I'm going to start this review with a serious disclaimer. This is a very ADULT book. It's about women's sexuality and sex scenes are graphically and vividly described. In much much explicit detail.
Now, I'm not going to go into that detail here obviously, but the subject matter is adult, and if you're debating reading this book, be very, very sure you're okay with that kind of language and description.
In fact, you should probably quit reading this review right now if you're not.
Okay, now that THAT is out of the way, here we go...
This book is the result of Lisa Taddeo gathering research about women's sexuality. In so doing, she decides to focus on Three Women. Hence the name of the book.
The three women are as follows (two have had their names changed):
Lina, a homemaker in suburban Indiana who struggles with panic attacks, chronic pain, and her husband's indifference to her pleas for affection. She rekindles a relationship with her high school boyfriend, who is also married, and the affair is passionate and obsessive.
Maggie is a high school student in North Dakota allegedly having a relationship with her married teacher. The affair and the emotional results of it, as well as of the trial that follows, turn Maggie's world inside out, and affect the whole town.
Sloane, in a coastal town in the Northeast, is a successful, beautiful business owner who is happily married to a man who likes to watch her have sex with other people.
I've struggled a bit with where to start in my review of this book. Even when I was reading it, I kept telling my husband, "I really am not sure how I feel about this book."
I still don't.
“It's the nuances of desire that hold the truth of who we are at our rawest moments. I set out to register the heat and sting of female want so that men and other women might more easily comprehend before they condemn. Because it's the quotidian moments of our lives that will go on forever, that will tell us who we were, who our neighbours and our mothers were, when we were too diligent in thinking they were nothing like us. This is the story of three women.”
The book is told in pieces, a bit from each woman's story revealed chapter by chapter. If you read this, don't ignore the front and back matter; the story with the author's grandmother, that partly inspired her to write this book, really stuck in my mind.
The idea that I was intrigued by, that we don't know other women's stories, that we don't talk about women's sexuality, that we live and exist in a world dictated by men's sexuality... all of that made me come into this book with a certain set of expectations. And I cannot say that this book necessarily met them.
But at the same time, I cannot say that the book disappointed either in its endeavor. It wanted to tell the stories of three women and specific elements of their sexuality. And, well, it did that.
Sometimes in very specific and explicit detail.
I think the problem that I have with this book is how small the scope was. Each woman was heterosexual (even Sloane identifies as such), each woman was white, each woman was American. Perhaps the book should have been called "Three American White Straight Women".
The other problem I have is the lack of hope or strength. This is not a story about three women owning their sexuality. This is the story of three women adhering to the unspoken (or sometimes spoken, hell, even demanded) rules laid out for them by their chosen men. Now, if this was the focus, then that is one thing. But each of these stories is framed by "look at me, owning my sexuality... as I conduct this affair exactly by the man's rules and parameters". Indeed, the most self-aware one is Sloane, and I did find her story the most interesting, as she addresses her past, her experiences with relationships (familial, romantic, professional, and yes, sexual), and how they affected her identity and, by association, her marriage and sexuality.
But each story did stay with me. I was truly sickened and heartbroken and so angered by Maggie's story. Yes, by the way she was treated by Aaron Knodel, the teacher who allegedly abused her (and yes, that is abuse), but even moreso, by the way the public treated her. Some of the comments, for example, called into question her account of events because she was not pretty enough or skinny enough to entice such a handsome, successful man to cheat on his wife. I was disgusted by the accounts of this story and the trial that followed. After the affair ended abruptly, Maggie went into a complete downward spiral; it was heartbreaking to see the effect of this relationship on her life.
Lina... for Lina I felt pity. She tried to take her sexuality into her own hands, but she becomes so codependent on the fantasy of the teenage boy she loved when she herself was in high school that she overlooks all his... well, all his many problems.
To be fair, the author never once says any of these relationships are positive or healthy. The only one who even describes herself as at all happy is Sloane, and even that seems tenuous (though by coming to terms with some familial history she is, as I said before, the most self-aware). Lina and Maggie are, at the book's conclusion, okay. Coping.
“We pretend to want things we don't want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.”
The book is written in more novelization style than analytical. It is SUPER gossipy, and perhaps that is one of the problems I had with it. In a text that says not to judge other women, it is written in a style almost as if to say, "Look at these three women; let me tell you all about them, and you can judge and compare yourself to them."
“Women shouldn't judge each others lives, if we haven't been through one another's fires.”
“Throughout history, men have broken women’s hearts in a particular way. They love them or half-love them and then grow weary and spend weeks and months extricating themselves soundlessly, pulling their tails back into their doorways, drying themselves off, and never calling again. Meanwhile, women wait. The more in love they are and the fewer options they have, the longer they wait, hoping that he will return with a smashed phone, with a smashed face, and say, I’m sorry, I was buried alive and the only thing I thought of was you, and feared that you would think I’d forsaken you when the truth is only that I lost your number, it was stolen from me by the men who buried me alive, and I’ve spent three years looking in phone books and now I have found you. I didn’t disappear, everything I felt didn’t just leave. You were right to know that would be cruel, unconscionable, impossible. Marry me.”
I think my problem with this book was actually the way it was marketed. It is not a nonfiction book addressing female identity and sexuality in a patriarchal world. It is a very limited story of three specific American white women and certain events related to their specific sexualities in that patriarchal world. If you come into this book knowing this, and not expecting anything else, AND if you don't mind the extremely graphic sexual descriptions, then perhaps you'll like it.
For me, I still don't know what I feel about it. I don't dislike it. I don't know if I particularly like it though, either. I did find it interesting, and I suppose that is a good enough place to leave it as any.
“Look at me. I put this war paint on, but underneath I’m scarred and scared and horny and tired and love you.”
Have you ever read a book that you just weren't sure how you felt about? I'd love to hear about it!
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